


Resonances

by gaydaydreamer



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: .....probably, AU where Ang doesn't die cuz that really sucked, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Fix-It, FtLoSW, Shangella, and your old teacher is just kinda there, angelweaver - Freeform, angsty exes, fighting to survive every single day, fucking your wife, jk it won't be like that, tfw you come home after a decade in the wilderness, we're gonna have to address Micah coming back tho
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:15:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25026049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaydaydreamer/pseuds/gaydaydreamer
Summary: In another life, it’s Angella’s hand she takes through the sigil, and Angella’s magic she takes into her battered heart.(or, the AU where Angella does the impulsive thing for once instead of her daughter, and Shadow Weaver contemplates the merits of getting back together with her ex.)
Relationships: Angella & Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra), Angella/Micah (She-Ra), Angella/Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra), maybe at some point??
Comments: 42
Kudos: 68





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cloudtreesium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudtreesium/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "what about your WIPs"  
> bro I'm getting there ok but I joined a Shadow Weaver discord and I've been having all these f e e l i n g s  
> takes place right after Angella and Glimmer's argument in 3x04

> _There is no clean way to enter_
> 
> _the heavy machinery of the heart._
> 
> _Just jagged cutthroat questions._
> 
> _Just the glitter and blood production._
> 
> \- Mindy Nettifee, "This is the Nonsense of Love"

Once again in the empty hallway, left with her daughter’s harsh words, the resounding echo of their row. Angella folded in on herself, hugging her chest and wrapping her wings tight around her shoulders. Always where her subjects could not see her, always turning the corner before she allowed herself to fall apart. 

_Paralyzed_ _by fear_. Glimmer had been right to revile her, however out of line, right about _Shadow Weaver_ too, and as she shuddered, as her body rejected the very thought, Angella _knew_ that what they needed was a powerful sorceress, someone familiar with the Fright Zone. Her heavy heart sank lower still.

Angella always acted decisively, never deigned to think of herself as one desperate or backed into a corner, for desperation made a strange beast of logic. There was no She-Ra to stop her, no Adora to consider. The Horde had taken that from her as it always took. Her lover, her _friend_. Much later, her husband, her daughter-- returned, but only because Adora intervened, possessed the courage that Angella did not, and made the sacrifice that the Queen would not. She could sacrifice too, and she wanted her daughter to know it. She could swallow her pride.

So once again faced with the hallway, the spare room, the makeshift prison, looming there in its lonely corridor, taunting her for her cowardice. Feelings fell into familiar grooves, thinking of that --angry, lonely, _lovely--_ woman just behind the guarded and gilded threshold. Her laugh, melodic and sharp, it hadn’t changed. Light Spinner, radiant and resolute, buried beneath all that wickedness and bile. She would have to trust that it was true, that even rancid promises could be sincere. 

Everything so much at once, so loud, it left the Queen dizzied. She needed something to ground herself. The anger, raw and burgeoning in her throat with the threat of a sob. _No_. Her love for Glimmer, her sacrifice. This one brave, stupid thing that she would do for her daughter. _Yes._ The breath in her chest, ragged with nerves. Tyrian wood beneath her cottoned palm. Her heartbeat in a hiccup, every pulse sounding like _Shadow Weaver_. The anxious shift of the Bright Moon guards beneath their plated armor, and then at last the curtain parted, the ornate double doors thrown open. 

The sorceress in repose, as the magic barrier around her shimmered. Her body molded to the armchair in the centre of her circle-- not cruel enough to make her stand, nor endure the degrading sight of her crouched on the floor. A book in her hand-- this the Queen had not thought to give, and though she did not mind the allowance she wished she knew _who_. The title immediately recognisable to Angella even across the room. _Herbology and Horticulture._

And with recognition came memory and fondness and everything Angella had promised to swallow the moment she confronted Shadow Weaver, _trespasser_ , in her palace. Lazy afternoons in the gardens, threading daisy chains into that gorgeous dark hair. Kisses that tasted like summer earth and felt like sunlight, low sweet whispers in her ear. Everything and nothing. _I love you._ She was so sure they’d meant it. 

The magic charge in the circle flared as the Queen approached, responding to her aura of power, or her trepidation. Pale eyes left the page to meet hers, a mutual regard, equals if not for the dividing spell-- prisoner and captor. Shadow Weaver waited, watched. Angella had forgotten this about her-- so much quiet, so much baited breath. Always guessing, always pulling teeth. Would she still cut her hands on those jagged edges?

But she wasted no time, a practiced monarch. “Hordak has Adora, and the Sword.” In other words, everything he needs.

Shadow Weaver’s eyes betrayed a brief ripple of distress before they dulled once more-- impassive to the untrained eye but to Angella, _resignation_. Even her pupils were different, trembling fragments in a lurid cradle. “Then it’s over. He _will_ open a portal.”

Angella took a deep breath. She was a political figurehead, after all, adept at diplomacy, asking without asking. “Not if we stop him.” What she meant-- _I need you_ \-- left in the margins of her voice, not even allowed a tremble.

 _“We?”_ She could hear the eyebrow raised. The sorceress stood, book discarded, trying to gain ground on her despite being physically separated. Angella knew this already-- Shadow Weaver moved into other people’s space as if she owned it. Touching skin as easily as a bolt of light or a scrap of shadow. As if a hand upon the cheek could be incidental. It was one word, one shift in placement-- sitting to standing, aloof to attentive-- but in it Shadow Weaver said everything she needed to. Every gesture had to count, she supposed, for someone so economical.

“You know how to navigate the Fright Zone. If we worked together--” If she wasn’t lying about defecting. If she didn’t evaporate like mist the moment she was unrestrained. She’d never before taken Angella for a fool. But no, that was Light Spinner, eons ago when the only things they spoke of were spells and gardening, and all that was at stake was her propriety, caught indecent with a Mystacorian diplomat beneath the dogwood tree.

"We." A recursive plea that she was too proud to voice-- extracted, echoed back, question and answer. And what Shadow Weaver meant-- _you need me?_ \-- Angella understood implicitly.

 _Together._ “If I can trust you.” How to negotiate with the enemy in twenty words or less. _And you must decide quickly_. A part of her was at all times bracing for some shift in reality to confirm they were already too late, a sick sinking feeling that made her wish she’d skipped breakfast.

“You have no choice.” Not triumphant, Shadow Weaver was just being pragmatic, maybe even sympathetic to her position, the impossible leap of faith she was making. Angella missed that-- tenderness for tenderness sake, not a means to an end, not a touch meant to coax or cajole. Adora told horror stories. The woman before her was all that-- evidence branded into her skin and soul-- but she was also rending herself in two, attempting to remain austere while posturing that she was not a threat. It would have been funny if it were any other prisoner. Angella would have loved to see this conflict of identity in Hordak. _Him, she could stand to see kneeling on the ground like a beaten dog._

 _“You are thinking your dark thoughts,”_ Light Spinner had remarked once, as Angella studied the angry mark Norwyn had left on the sorceress’s cheek for talking back. Her frown involuntary, but only at the memory, and Shadow Weaver remained unfazed. Hadn’t Norwyn gotten what he deserved? That wasn’t how Micah told it. She could ask Shadow Weaver, but _no_ , she never would. To know her then was enough.

She placed her hand, at last, to the barrier between them-- “I am choosing”-- and pressed her magic right up against, and _through,_ in a flash of glittering pink light. _I am choosing you_. And it had taken years, decades, but at once only moments, for there to be nothing at all to seperate them.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in this house we hate Norwyn.
> 
> tomorrow's my birthday so if you liked this at all a comment would make a great present just sayinggggggg


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is possibly my quickest chapter turnaround ever. Also, forgot to mention this before but this story was written for [cloudtreesium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudtreesium/pseuds/cloudtreesium) who came up with the idea and talked with me about magic until I could no longer resist <3

When Angella was young and her reign was new, she used to play a game with herself in the palace courtyard-- circling up into the sky as high as she could go, before stilling her wings and letting her body drop. To feel the lurch of freefall, to know the bolt of fear gripping her heart and its purpose therein, and to see how long she could stand to let the ground rush up to meet her before catching herself in a single, graceful swoop. When Shadow Weaver held out her hand, when she took it-- touching for the first time, no barrier between them-- it felt not so dissimilar to the moment her wings withdrew, up in the stratosphere where the air was wasp wing thin, bracing for the plunge.

What she expected-- a gelid numbness, the light in her extinguished, of being _torn into_ , pillaged like a tomb. Instead it blossomed in her core, summer warmed and syrupy slow, rolling over her like the moonrise over Bright Moon. Shadow Weaver’s grip was firm, gentle, her eyes liquid amber and trusting, meeting hers, revealing all that the mask could not. Then the tingle against her skin, the _tug_ of her taking, but Angella’s pulse had already steadied, and she squeezed Shadow Weaver’s hand, trust returned. 

It was intense, beautiful, so much _more_ than she expected from a woman ruined by darkness. Submitting her magic to that raw, ravenous energy, Angella found she could still breathe after all-- no impending collision with an unforgiving earth to contend with. No freefall, only flight.

In her periphery the world around her melted, until all she could see and sense and feel was that wellspring of magic-- drawn out of her like blood from a pinprick, steady and florid. Shadow Weaver ever-present beside her, her scent familiar, earthy, the weight of palm against palm, the alacrity that poured from her as the current of Angella’s magic passed through her body. Shadow Weaver illuminated from within, a stained-glass mosaic, fragmented and bright. Shadow Weaver, the rhythm of her heart resounding.

The Fright Zone materialized in a blur of grey steel and soldiers and bots and the two of them running with hands still clasped as Shadow Weaver led, as she used the borrowed power to knock any obstacles aside like paper dolls. All too fast for Angella to process the sensation of every pull, every strike, until a lone figure rounded the corner, nearly colliding with them. 

“I heard you were with the _enemy_ ,” that derisive hiss, the very edge of it quivering with petulance, “but are you actually holding hands with a princess right now?” A Horde soldier, uniform different from the others, scarcely older than her own daughter, with a bright-burning fury in her heterochromatic eyes. A flash grenade of a girl, begging to detonate.

 _Catra._ She’d heard about this one-- thorn in Adora’s side, love that soured at a glance like curdled custard. Poised herself as an obstacle, and effective-- halting Shadow Weaver’s progress, stilling the movement of magic between them. _Would she falter?_ In the span of a heartbeat, Angella wasn’t sure, had not calculated in her plans that this girl was as good as _daughter_ to the sorceress.

She shouldn’t have doubted, should have braced for when the steady pull resumed-- this time, yanked and sudden, knocking her off balance with its intensity. “Oh Catra, you mistake me,” Shadow Weaver cooed, far too saccharine for the sinister intent that settled shroud-like over Angella, “I’m holding hands with the _Queen_.”

It overcame her in a dizzying rush, her vision spotting. Angella shivered as the bright flare of her magic left her, warmth ablated from her skin as the sorceress emptied her very soul into a single outstretched palm. It tore the Queen open after all, like claws splitting the seams of a carcass, teeth worrying open the bones, lapping up the marrow, sucking her dry.

Siphoned away, the magic shimmered on Shadow Weaver’s skin, caught in her hair, _breathed_ there and died there. Angella watched it move in tandem with the sorceress, as a living thing might move, she marveled-- perhaps with a twinge of jealousy-- at the delicate caresses it gave her. And in a single gesture, delicacy turned fervor. Shadow Weaver channeled it, commanded it, sharpened and sent it racing towards Catra, too quick to evade. 

Undulating in the Queen’s bleary sight, the bruise-black mass found its mark, inundating Catra and raising her high into the rafters. She could feel the grip of it faintly-- phantom limb that it was-- around the trembling form of her, squeezing, rippling shockwaves, wringing out those half-bitten back gasps of pain. And then the raw-throated screams, that shouldn’t have made her shudder, satisfied. 

Catra writhed in her clutches-- Shadow Weaver’s clutches-- and she relished it, being the riptide that drowned on a whim, making the Horde pay for her years of suffering. It tasted like honey on her palette, sweet and a little rancid. Her eyes rolled back in her head, complete surrender to the throe of pure power that overtook her. A muscle she wasn’t aware she possessed, flexed, crushing.

As her magic drained, shadows slithered in to fill the empty space, demanding the fullness of her, nestling in deep and coaxing her to ripeness until she was swollen and bruising, nearly spoiled. She guided darkness into herself, filling the dearth left by Shadow Weaver’s relentless broach. It was reflexive, rapturous, like falling asleep. _I’m going to kill her_ , Angella thought, but the horror of the deed was dull and distant. She couldn’t stop the mounting hunger, she would gorge herself until she was sick with it, vengeance-bloated.

Catra had stopped screaming, gone limp, Shadow Weaver withdrawing where Angella, grief-ravaged, could not. _Released_ , quick as a fist unclenched, the malevolent haze receding and Catra slumped on the floor-- _alive,_ a broken, battered thing, but alive. Angella, dazed, bit back the bile that rose in her. _What have I done?_ The remnants of Shadow Weaver’s castoff energy still squirmed against her skin, making her shiver. More soldiers filled the hall, rushing to Catra’s aid, guns poised to lay down cover fire, but there was no need. Shadow Weaver looked even more haggard than Angella felt. _All magic has its price,_ Light Spinner once lamented, to which she’d replied, teasingly, arrogantly--

_Not mine._

They escaped through an adjacent corridor, where, finally, she felt her hand unwind from Shadow Weaver’s. Properly exhausted, Angella slumped against the steel plated wall, panting, succumbing to the tolls taken-- her breath, her marrow, her conviction that she was above mortal folly. “Shadow Weaver,” her voice was ragged and strange to her, and “please,” far too husky. Every part of her achingly tender, like a scab peeled away too soon. _Please can we rest._

“Of course Your Majesty,” matching her timbre-- _was it the magic that heightened everything so? The resonance of a seiche, that began in one body and culminated in another?_ Whatever had passed between them, echoed infinitely, a vertical harmonic motion poised to subsume them both. But Shadow Weaver was cloud-like in nature, always shifting, and there was nothing raw about her next words, “Are you hurt?” nothing but tenderness in the way she moved into Angella’s space, grasping, supporting her weight.

“No, I’m--” her breath caught. _No_ , but, she needed a minute. A minute they didn’t have. Shadow Weaver engulfing her, solid, soft and present. A cool hand to the back of her neck, _relief_. The other buried in the crook of her arm, keeping her stable. Angella had forgotten how good it felt, having someone to lean against. Touching, touching. Still dizzy, incoherent. Her voice a rolling tempest rumble, “does it always feel like this?”

A wry chuckle, “as opposed to all the other times I’ve taken Runestone magic directly from its wielder?” As in, none. As in a _first time_ , for both of them. A spark of their old rapport flared in her, bright with mirth, and words to spare for teasing-- comforting, in her own way. Concern nevertheless present in the eyes-- they were actually quite striking as they were now, fractured-- and in the tension of her spine. _Oh_. Angella was still fully leaning into her. She rectified that, blithe humour and hiccup of embarrassment returning her somewhat to form, and their bodies once again moved apart, craving the touch while simultaneously rebuking it. Their tunnel vision expanded, the immediacy of their situation returned-- blaring intruder alarm and the din of soldiers searching, the weight of knowing somewhere, in this industrial labyrinth, Hordak was set to end the world proper.

“The portal--” he voice record-scratch dry but otherwise back to its normal affect.

“Would be this way.” Shadow Weaver gestured down the corridor, turned, and Angella matched her stride. They fell silent upon approach, and Angella was left to guess, like so many times before, what her brooding companion made of this-- their combining of energies, the bizarre lapse into intimacy afterward. All pretense of animosity discarded.

She thought again of the seiche-- the resonant, recursive undulating that passed between two shores. On the beach, in Mystacor, where she once lay with the sorceress, hand in hand, thigh to thigh-- not so different to how she felt now, in the wake of their exchange. She’d gotten a taste of Shadow Weaver’s darkness, and Shadow Weaver, in turn, shared a glimpse of her light. They’d canceled each other out, vengeance and mercy. 

The woman in question turned, regarded her as one might regard the hull of a ship in the wake of a maelstrom. _Would she hold up, just once more? Would she endure?_ Angella set her shoulders, wings stretched back, chin high, reminding Shadow Weaver it was _her_ , after all that brought them here. Angella was not a woman of half-measures. She would see this through.

 _All magic has its price_. She gazed at Shadow Weaver, the lurid Fright Zone light etched around her, beautiful, terrible, all at once. Hidden beneath her layers of cloth, that wretched mask, but as naked to Angella as she’d ever been. She swallowed hard, nodded her ascent, and they arrived at the threshold of Hordak’s sanctum together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can pry my "Angella is actually not a very nice person" headcanon out of my cold, dead hands thankyouverymuch
> 
> comment below if you wanna see these two idiots get drunk together


End file.
